


Now She Has No Choice

by liveonthesun



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-29
Updated: 2008-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:52:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveonthesun/pseuds/liveonthesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five brief character sketches of Scully through Season 8</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now She Has No Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://hopelessly-lazy.livejournal.com/profile)[**hopelessly_lazy**](http://hopelessly-lazy.livejournal.com/) for [](http://xf-santa.livejournal.com/profile)[**xf_santa**](http://xf-santa.livejournal.com/). Thanks to [](http://ninamazing.livejournal.com/profile)[**ninamazing**](http://ninamazing.livejournal.com/) for the beta! ♥

While she's at work, she's still the same--practical Scully in her practical heels and practical black suits and practical blue button up shirts. She is stern and blank, keeping herself tucked away, folded into herself with work on her mind and absolutely nothing else. She must keep herself completely emotionless, even more so than she has the past seven years.

There are times she just wants to scream. She wants to tell the world she's pregnant and lonely and just doesn't know how much more of this she can take before she goes insane with the weight of it all.

She has a whole new respect for Mulder, understands how he must have felt as he put up with her in the beginning days when they were so desperately trying to figure each other out. Doggett seems so simple to her, closed minded and stubborn. He can't seem to wrap his mind around anything she says, and she knows she sounds crazy, knows he's thinking about her exactly the way she thought about Mulder in their early days together.

It feels so odd playing the role of the believer. She had been one for much longer than she let on (though maybe never to the full extent he was), but questioning Mulder had become her job. He would tug and she would resist. It was how they worked, what kept them together, and so she played the game. But being something at heart and living and breathing the life are two completely different things.

She's no longer the sane, rational one. She listens to the ideas and speculations as they tumble from her lips and can hardly believe she's the one saying them. She sometimes finds her brain automatically forming arguments to her own theories.

If Mulder could see her, she knows he would be laughing. _Go with it, Scully,_ he would always say.

Now she has no choice.

***

Sometimes at night she stands in front of the mirror, staring at her impossible body and miraculous pregnancy. She's not showing, but she notices the difference: every day her belly seems more round and her breasts more swollen and tender. It feels almost like puberty all over, never knowing how she's going to feel, what mood she's going to be in, having no control over her body. It's quite suitable when she thinks about it--a whole new, unexpected body to go with her whole new, unexpected life.

She worries though, even without the threat of this baby being something other than human, with so many things that have fucked with her body since pregnancy--exposure to the green substance from the clones, having a parasite embedded into her spine--there's no way this baby will be completely healthy. At least, there's no way he will be completely normal.

But then she can't help but laugh at herself a little. There was never any hope of this baby being normal to begin with, considering the family history.

Always she dreams of Mulder. A night can't go by that she doesn't. Mostly they're happy dreams--he's still with her, solving cases and going to doctors appointments, talking to her belly at night and holding her as she falls asleep, fucking her fantastically and devoting his full energy to taking care of her. It's not rare for her to wake up and find her hand between her legs, replacing his touch with her own.

Every once in a while, she'll have a dark, terrifying dream. She'll see him held down with clamps and probes digging under his skin and all other sorts of machinery surrounding him. He screams for her, fights to lift his arms and reach for her.

On these nights she wakes up wet with sweat and tears, pain that she knows is his flooding through her body.

***

After his funeral, between days of mourning and days of pushing it as far from her mind as possible, she has days of being thoroughly angry at him. He brought this all on himself by devoting his life to chasing aliens. If he had just left it alone and gone on with his life the way so many others who have loved ones taken from them do, he would still be here. She wouldn't be alone. She could be a normal woman with a normal job and a normal family.

She wishes he was here just so she could scream at him for leaving her. She would tell him everything he'd done to mess up the Great Plan she had had for life since college. Her cancer, her crisis of faith, her infertility--none of it would have ever happened if it hadn't been for him.

But then she remembers that if he hadn't devoted his life to chasing aliens, she never would have met him. He had the ability to wholly shake the world of anyone who comes in contact with him, for better or for worse. There never was a boring day with him around: sometimes it was the monsters, and other times was just little ways he had of making life wonderful. Unfortunately, it's the former more often than the latter.

At the end of the day she always decides that knowing him and being caught up in his crazy world is well worth any normalcy he may have caused her to lose.

Normalcy must get boring after a while, anyway.

***

The first time she sees him hold William, it's like magic. She watches as he cups the baby's head in his hand, sweeping his thumb over the tiny, soft cheek.

Mulder looks up at her and smiles. "He has your eyes."

She walks up to him and leans her head against his arm. She runs her hand down William's arm, and he wraps his tiny hand around her finger.

She looks up at Mulder and smiles. "He has your mouth."

And she's happy. Really, actually happy for the first time in God knows how long. Her baby is healthy and Mulder is with her and for a few minutes she can pretend like everything is okay.

***

"You have to go, Mulder."

"Go where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere. Anywhere. They just told me you have to go."

"And you want me to leave?"

"I want you to be alive."

He cups her cheek in his hand and she closes her eyes and leans into his touch.

"Mulder," she whispers, breath tickling against the skin on his wrist, "I've already lived through you dying once. I'd rather know you're out there somewhere than know I'll never see you. I can't live through that again."

For once, when she looks into his eyes she can't tell what he's thinking. His whole face is just blank, unsure of what to make of what she's saying.

Fight it as she may, she feels her eyes begin to water, and just when she knows she's about to start crying, he brings his face down and places his mouth over hers, thumbs sweeping under her eyes to catch her tears.

Three hours and no clothes later, she's in an empty bed running her hand over the sheets on his side and burying her face into his pillow.

She doesn't cry, though, because she knows he'll come back. He always does.


End file.
